JOHNNY continued to lie across the bow, pulling at the coral with
his hands. Our boat had grounded several yards from the sandy beach, out
of danger from slipping back into deep water. I shipped the oars.

"Try it yourself!" Johnny said, trying to stand. I
stood up in the raft and sprawled immediately. I didn't think it was weakness.
It was simply this: The instant I rose, the island and sea tipped up like
a dinner plate standing on edge. In trying to counter this phenomenon I leaned
too far and lost my balance.

I struggled up and went down again. I stood up and
fell eight times before it occurred to me that the oars might serve to steady
me. I unshipped them and hobbled out of the raft. I found that when the landscape
showed signs of tipping up toward the right, I could hold it down by putting
all my weight on the left oar. If I pressed too hard, however, the world
would start rising up to the left. Then I had to bear down on the right oar.
I wondered if Johnny and Jimmy knew how hard I was working to keep the landscape
on an even keel so that the three of us wouldn't fall off it.

After several minutes of this I had acquired
sufficient

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skill to keep the situation under control with light deft touches
of the oars. Occasionally the island would give an unexpected heave, but
I usually caught it in time and shoved it back down to where it belonged.
This was important, because I had observed that several pockets in the coral
hummocks were full of clear water.

I believed this was rain water, uncontaminated by
salt. Too much tipping and rolling would spill it out. When I thought I had
our situation in hand I knelt down and tasted the water in one of the pockets.
It was fresh. I called to the others. For the next few minutes we drank,
caught our breaths, and drank again. Until you have been through an ordeal
like ours you will never know how good that clear, cold water tasted. We
buried our faces in it.

When we could hold no more I staggered up and looked
around. We were 30 or 40 feet from the sand and I thought we had better move
the boat up to the beach. Johnny and I dragged it along while Jimmy crawled
on all fours.

We were without shoes and had to pick our way carefully
over the coral, which lay just beneath the surface. It was as sharp in places
as broken glass. When we had hauled the raft out of reach of the tide we
all gave thanks to God for our landfall and for our safe passage among the
sharks, through the storm, and across the reef. Even as we prayed I could
see an occasional gray hulk slicking around out beyond the reef. But those
sharks would eat no men today.

The next thing was to find food and shelter. It was
now that I began to realize that my own condition was not so good; it was
not the island that was pitching and rolling. It was me. I could not walk
without at least one oar. And my mind functioned only with the greatest
difficulty, even after I had tried every device I knew to get a grip on my
thoughts. This is illustrated best by the incident of Jimmy's
pants.

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The buttons had come off and the zippers had been
put out of commission by salt water and salt air. The poor kid kept losing
them as he crawled along. I thought deeply and laboriously on what I might
do for him. Earlier I had tied on my own trousers with a cord, but it didn't
occur to me to fix Jimmy up the same way.

Johnny sat and thought also, his chin resting on his
hands, but he couldn't think of a remedy. Meanwhile, the sun was burning
me through the rents in my shirt. I stumbled over to a tree and cut off a
piece of vine which I used to lace up the torn places. I regarded this as
a pretty ingenious piece of work. All the time I was

So, instead of tying Jimmy's pants on with lengths
of vine, we gave it up. They continued to fall off him as he crawled along
and Johnny and I kept putting them back on him. I think the Whittaker mentality
was at its lowest ebb that afternoon.

The part of the island where we now stood was only
a few hundred feet wide. We were very near the foot. If the Lord hadn't taken
us by the hand when He did we would have missed it entirely and have been
out there in the distance somewhere, bound for almost certain
death.

The island ran north and south and we were in need
of reaching the lee side for shelter from sun and rain. On the way, Johnny
found some cocoanuts, which he rolled along with his feet. He had six by
the time we found a suitable place. I set about opening them with the
sheath knife.

They had been there a long time and the hulls were
iron hard. In my condition it took 40 minutes to cut around the hull and
into the eyes of the nut. When I miscalculated and missed the eyes, more
long minutes of cutting were necessary.

The cocoanuts had little milk in them, but the pulp
was fairly soft and it was nourishing. As we ate I noticed that some small,
rodent-like animals (the size of large rats) had come up to feed at the discarded
shells. I crept up and killed a couple with the knife. The survivors scampered
away. Apparently, however, they laughed it off among themselves because they
soon returned and I killed again.

It was our first fresh meat since the night of Oct.
20 at Hickam Field. This and the cocoanut pulp made me feel just well enough
to realize I was violently hungry. Thirst returned.

I recrossed the island and collected a couple of
quarts

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of water from the coral depressions, storing it in a Mae West.
I made one last trip and hauled the raft across.

As it grew dark we bedded down, turning the raft over
us for shelter. Then the rain came down again, flooding our bedroom. We got
no sleep. I think we rested pretty well, however, despite the rolling and
pitching of the island. It seemed to me, as I dug my fingers into the sand
to hold on, that even in the roughest weather our tiny raft never had behaved
as badly as that 10 mile island.

On the morning of Nov. 12 Johnny found more cocoanuts
and we ate again. As a matter of fact we ate at intervals all day. Whittaker,
the mighty hunter, killed more animals. The flesh wasn't the most appetizing
in the world, but it was strengthening. Johnny and I felt much better. Poor
Jimmy seemed to grow steadily worse. I had recovered sufficiently to be genuinely
worried about him.

We decided against trying to move on that day. We
told Jimmy it wouldn't hurt any of us to recuperate for a day. He nodded
vaguely and lay down again.

He at least was in less pain now. The drenching from
the skies had washed the salt out of his ulcers. They looked less angry and
seemed about to start healing. Johnny was much happier, too, though his
sufferings in this respect never had been as bad as Reynold's. I had escaped
the scourge; probably because my hide is too tough to be affected by such
things as salt water.

I was beginning to lose some of it, though. Some of
the men shed and grew new skin six and eight times in the rafts and now I
was starting. My most peculiar after effect has been the growth of an entire
new set of fingernails, halfmoons and all.

During the morning our friend the Kingfisher scout
plane roared over. We waved, as usual, consoling ourselves afterward that
the exercise probably had done us

Page 109

good. At 3 PM we saw five planes out at sea, flying
in formation. We assumed they were looking for submarines.

On the contrary, they were looking for Rickenbacker,
Adamson, Bartek, and us. Cherry's raft had been sighted the previous afternoon
just about the time we were crossing the reef. He had been picked up shortly
afterward and the search from other duties were flying low over the ocean,
looking for two rafts.

The five-plane formation moved closer in, but did
not pass over the island. We were not seen.

As the sun sank, we rustled up more cocoanuts. It
wasn't so difficult opening them now. I wished, however, we could get some
fresher ones. There were plenty growing about 20 feet above our heads, but
tree climbing still was considerably beyond either Johnny or me. The trees
were too sturdy to be shaken and our aim was not strong enough to make possible
knocking any of them down.

We thankfully ate those available and turned in. This
night we abandoned our rubber bedroom, sleeping on the sand about 30 feet
away. Again it rained intermittently and we had a cold, miserable night.
The island pitched less and that was a help.

At sunrise we thanked God again for our landfall and
drank the last of the water. When I went for more I found that the depressions
had been polluted by salt. High waves, whipped up by the wind, must have
caused this. At least we now had a definite task; that of finding fresh water
to drink. Fortunately there were no weighty decisions to be made. We were
so near the north of the island there was only one direction in which to
go.

A scout plane crossed about two miles to the south.
We took to the raft and started in that direction. When we had rowed about
half a mile I saw a native hut on the beach. Feeling sure we had struck a
village of the outpost of one, we put in.

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It was a single thatched hut and deserted at that,
but it looked like lower Manhattan to me. There was nothing inside it except
an unfinished boat.

We drank heartily of water that had collected in cavities
hollowed out of the bases of cocoanut palms. It was full of wigglers, but
they tasted fine. At that writing I would have drunk anything smaller than
me.

At 12:30 PM on this 23rd day our wanderings,
a plane passed directly over our heads, only 200 feet up. It roared across
at such an angle it would have been impossible for the pilot to have seen
us. We didn't care too much. We had found shelter. We were sure of restful
sleep, which we needed now almost as much as we had needed water before.
The chief reason I still was praying for quick rescue was that of medical
assistance for Reynolds.

We sprawled out on the floor of the native hut and
fell asleep at once. What awakened me I don't know. At 1:10, however, I sat
up fully aroused. Looking out across the shimmering water I saw what I thought
might be a task force. I thought I saw destroyers close in and other craft
farther out. It was very bright and hard to distinguish the outlines of the
boats.

I shook Johnny. He raised up and had a look, but
apparently the sight didn't register. He lay back down.

"They're just barges," he said.

"Just barges!" I yelled as loudly as my voice would
permit. "Just barges! What do you want? The Queen Mary?"

I stumbled out to the raft and launched it. I was
beginning to see better. I concluded these were new model destroyers. I never
had seen anything like them before. About a quarter of a mile out I saw what
they were  outrigger canoes. The natives had seen me head out and now
were coming in my direction. My senses

Page 111

were so slowed that it seemed to me they were making about 50 knots
an hour.

When the boat drew near I observed that the features
of the head man in the lead boat were strikingly Japanese in cast. This was
no time for ceremony, so I called out:

"You Japanese?" All the men in the canoe shook their
heads in unison. I relaxed. They cruised up, had a swift, appraising look
at me, then flung over a line. I made it fast to the bow of the raft. I made
them understand there were two more men on the island. We headed
shoreward.

The outrigger had four little paddlemen who certainly
could make speed. For the first time I now saw a foamy bow wave under a rubber
life raft. I was somewhat apprehensive at first. It seemed to me we were
going too fast for safety.

I spoke to a man in their stern about our long fast
and our present hunger and thirst. He spoke rapidly to the others. As the
boat touched shore a young fellow sprang out, carrying a length of rope and
a chopper made of a wooden stick and a metal blade. Assisting himself with
the rope, he ran up a palm tree and knocked some ripe cocoanuts.

By the time we had reached the hut he was there, lopping
the tops off the nuts with the chopper. He fashioned them into rude drinking
cups. We downed the milk  about a pint from each cocoanut  and
ate the rich, white meat. These were about a thousand per cent better than
the ones we had had during the previous 48 hours.

I now took a good look at the native's chopper and
my hopes soared. The metal blade had been the tongue of a white man's wood
plane. We were getting close to civilization.

Our new friends appeared to be in a great hurry to
get somewhere. They were assisting DeAngelis and carrying

Page 112

Jimmy out to the canoe. They made me understand that we were to
go with them to their village. Johnny and Jimmy were stretched out on mats
across the connecting supports between the canoe and the outrigger float.
I got back into the raft and we were on our way  again at what seemed
reckless speed.

We left the open sea, passing into a long, curving
lagoon. Then the village came into view. It was a sizable one. Smoke curled
up among the thatched, peaked huts. And what was that strange smell? I pondered.
Ah, yes. Cooking!

We were greeted by what happened to be the entire
population. The women were clad only in lava lavas and smiles, but even with
all that pulchritude before me I could think only of the savory aromas that
filled the air.

The smiles quickly changed to tears  I mean
tears  when the women saw our condition. We were emaciated. Our hair
and beards were long and straggly. Jimmy Reynolds looked like a dying
man.

We unloaded. On the way to the guest hut I was informed
that the island is owned by a friendly power which maintains a radio station
there. Shortly before, a United States Navy plane had dropped a note, asking
that the small garrison be on the lookout for us. That was why the natives
happened to be out in force during the heat of the day. A runner even then
was on his way to their headquarters, I was informed.

Two officers arrived shortly afterward. We were given
our fill of fruit juices, then DeAngelis and Reynolds were put to bed on
fragrant mats. I was asked what I would like to eat.

And this was no game, such as we had played in the
raft that terrible day. These people were ready to deliver. I spotted some
chickens taking their ease under a palm tree. It was their last siesta. I
suggested boiling them down

Page 113

to make a rich broth. This was done, under supervision of a man
from the garrison.

I had my first bath with soap in more than three weeks,
then I sat down to wait for dinner. And it was torture. The aroma of chicken
permeated the entire area. It filled the air. It was all I could do to keep
from grabbing one of the birds from the pot and rending it.

My thoughts soon returned to Jimmy Reynolds. In the
shadows of the hut he looked even more lifeless than he had in the raft.
He needed the best medical attention and quickly. But even as I worried,
radio signals were crackling through the air. Our friends of the garrison
were on the job.